Nashuri Collection (Namor x Shuri)

The Eyes are the Windows to the Soul pt. 3

The Eyes are the Windows to the Soul (3.)

Shuri didn't know when her attraction to him first started. When she began thinking about the wide canvas of his back. How she'd fit around him. How protected she would feel in his arms. Wondered if he was just as handsome without the beard or a dud.

Her feelings had started innocently enough. Before he had mostly been an amusing laugh or a thorn in her side during invention approvals. She couldn't say he and T'Challa had ever been childhood friends, more so rivals, but he was always around annoying them in some way.

M'Baku was anti-technology for the most part too, so surely, he was a bad match for her. Very traditional. Huge compared to her. Lack of tact too! Everything pointed to how illogical it was to look at him that way.

She wasn't some young girl with a crush on an unattainable boyband member!

However, there had been a noticeable shift in M'Baku during the worst of her brother's sickness. M'Baku became someone who would help. Someone to rely on. Someone who could make her laugh after a day of crying.

Recently, he was so comforting during their morning talks. Charming in his care and words. He valued her opinion and sought her advice. He was still fairly new to ruling all of Wakanda as interim king after all, but who was going to take his place? Not her.

M'Baku didn't realize what it did to the inner Shuri when he cupped her face in his hands. A loving gesture that she was starved for it.

His three wives were lovely. No competition with her (she didn't know if with each other), and they had taught her about cooking, fighting, and female Jabari traditions. To be sister wives wasn't the worst thing in the world, right?

As shameful as it was, Shuri had started going to church with them when she could to learn about Hanuman. To impress M'Baku. If Bast existed (and they were going to tussle if she did), she hadn't been struck down by lightning yet.

So, of course, she had been utterly mortified and deflated when he found out.

M'Baku was a stupid man, but not a stupid man.

With time, she would fling away the fondness for him. But she couldn't yet curb the giddy feeling from seeing him.

Even worse, he had recommended another man to her. That man to be specific.

Shuri played with the kimoyo beads on her wrist. The memory crept up on her. She had passed David, the merchant tribe's eldest son, on her way to the lab one day, and heard him whispering frantically to his friend.

"I swear it, Masego! You know my family's very conscious of spirits. A dark figure came to my flat in the middle of the night. Paralyzed with fear, I just stared at it. I heard a high-pitched screeching that sweetened into the most beautiful melody with no words."

'Leave her to her god. I'll tell you once only.'

"You watch too many movies, man." The friend shrugged.

"No, no it was a sign. In the morning, I examined myself and knew I had to cut ties with—" At that, the men had noticed her. True to his sweet nature, David had still acknowledged her with an awkward wave.

It had been the last she thought of it. Or the last she allowed herself to think of him. She had liked David.

But Wakandans and their superstitions weren't the clear conclusion anymore.

Chioma parted Shuri's hair. Shuri sat on a pillow on the floor between the woman's knees. She was lucky to have a former renowned hairstylist, manicurist, and masseuse in her life.

"You know for dry hair you have to first moisturize and then seal it with an oil. Oil seals in what's already there, so if you have arid areas on your scalp ... Shuri?"

"Yeah, yeah." She muttered.

Trying to reset her thoughts was difficult. Since M'Baku's exposure, Namor kept popping up in her head. And not out of love. Well, no, it was his arrogance to think he had the right to feel that way for her. Then, a little disbelief. A chunk of flattery. A supposed god of how many centuries was smitten with her? He was a man who was impressed by her intelligence and not repulsed or jealous of it.